Source: Malvo Claims Shooting In Florida

June 16, 2006|The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Lee Boyd Malvo told law enforcement officials this spring that he and fellow sniper John Allen Muhammad are responsible for four shootings across the country, including one in Florida, that have not been publicly attributed to them, a source familiar with the case said.

A second source confirmed that investigators have received information implicating the snipers in those shootings, which claimed the lives of two men and wounded two others in the months before the October 2002 slayings that terrorized the Washington, D.C., region. The sources declined to speak for attribution.

It is unclear to what degree, if any, authorities have corroborated Malvo's new claims. He has provided conflicting accounts of shootings in the past.

The claims bring the list of confirmed and suspected sniper shootings to 27, including 17 homicides, and add two states to the list of jurisdictions that could file charges against Muhammad and Malvo.

The first previously undisclosed homicide victim was a man shot in California in February or March 2002. The second was a 37-year-old Texas man shot in the head from a distance May 27 in a sparsely populated area of Denton, a Dallas suburb.

The two survivors are a 76-year-old Tucson man shot May 18, 2002, at a golf course in west-central Florida and a 54-year-old Louisiana man robbed and shot Aug. 1, 2002, after leaving a shopping mall in a suburb of Baton Rouge.

Unlike most of the Washington area slayings, which targeted random victims shot from afar with a powerful rifle, some of the earlier shootings were conducted at close range with a .22-caliber handgun.